More than a third of American adults who have been in a romantic relationship have used a password they were not supposed to have to look through a partner's account or messages without that partner knowing. The figure, 36%, comes from a survey of 1,000 US adults conducted in September 2026 by All About Cookies, a website that reviews privacy and security software. The results carry a last-updated date of October 27, 2026.

The same share said they had found something upsetting or concerning by going through a partner's or an ex's account. Streaming services remain the most widely shared login between partners, at 84%. Banking credentials sit at the other extreme: 62% of those who share banking access with a current partner waited more than a year before handing it over, according to All About Cookies.

In Short

A website that reviews password and privacy tools asked 1,000 Americans about sharing passwords with partners, and more than a third admitted to secretly looking through a partner's account. Most people share streaming logins quickly but hold back bank and email passwords for much longer. For companies selling ads inside logged-in apps, the numbers are a reminder that one account often belongs to more than one person.

How the survey was built

According to All About Cookies, the survey covered 1,000 US adults in September 2026, and "responses were limited to people who indicated they have been in at least one romantic relationship in their lives." The headline figure is therefore a share of people with relationship experience, not of the whole adult population, even though the survey's title refers simply to "Americans."

Several details that normally accompany a consumer poll are missing. All About Cookies does not name a research vendor or panel, does not say how respondents were recruited, gives no fieldwork dates beyond the month, and publishes neither a margin of error nor a weighting method. Subgroup base sizes are absent too. That matters because not every question went to all 1,000 people. The trust question was "limited to respondents currently in a romantic relationship," according to the chart's source note; the question about former partners went to people with an ex; and the timing questions refer only to the respondent's current partner.

The contrast with other consumer privacy research is clear. When DuckDuckGo published its survey of 1,944 US adults on AI chatbot use in August 2026, it named the panel provider, gave fieldwork dates of June 17 to 27 and stated a margin of error of about plus or minus 2.2 points. For a simple random sample of 1,000, the conventional margin of error at 95% confidence would be roughly plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, by PPC Land's calculation. That assumes probability sampling, which All About Cookies does not claim, and the range widens for every subgroup smaller than the full sample.

The research was written by Steph Trejos, described as a Senior Product Testing Editor at All About Cookies and a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist, and edited by Kalleigh Lane.

Snooping, refusals and pressure

The central finding is about covert access. According to All About Cookies, 36% of respondents "have checked a partner's account or messages without their knowledge, using a password the partner didn't know they had." That is a narrower act than simply knowing a partner's password. It describes using credentials obtained without the partner's awareness.

An identical 36% reported discovering "something upsetting or concerning" through a partner's or ex's login. The chart for that finding labels it "Found something upsetting using a partner's login," while the accompanying text and the key findings extend it to former partners. The survey reports the two 36% figures side by side and does not say how far the groups overlap.

Requests for passwords do not always end in compliance. When a partner asked for a password they did not want to share, 22% of respondents refused and 13% handed it over anyway. All About Cookies adds the two together to conclude that "more than a third of people have been pushed by a partner to share a password they would have preferred to keep to themselves." The resulting 35% assumes nobody belongs to both groups. A respondent who refused one request and gave in to another would be counted twice, and the survey does not publish an unduplicated figure.

Routine monitoring is less common but still measurable. According to the survey, 15% check their partner's digital accounts every week - 10% with the partner's permission and 5% without it. "This shows how important it is to be sure about what you want to share with a romantic partner, since you can never be sure how they will use it," the survey text states.

Which logins partners share

Streaming accounts top the list. Among respondents who have been in a relationship, 84% have shared a streaming password with a partner. Phone passcodes follow at 74%, then food delivery or shopping apps at 59%. Those are the only three categories that more than half of respondents have shared.

Below that line, the figures fall for accounts that hold money and private communication:

  • Banking or financial services: 48%
  • Email accounts: 39%
  • Social media accounts: 36%
  • Cloud photo storage: 33%

All About Cookies frames the gap in terms of stakes. In its words, "sharing a Netflix login is one thing. Handing over the keys to your entire digital life is another, and most people draw a line somewhere." The less-shared categories, the survey notes, are "the accounts that hold money, private messages, and personal photos."

How quickly passwords change hands

Respondents were asked how long they had been with their current partner before sharing each type of password. The survey used five bands, from less than a month to more than a year.

Password type Under 1 month 1-3 months 3-6 months 6-12 months Over 1 year
Streaming services 25% 18% 19% 15% 24%
Food delivery or shopping apps 24% 17% 19% 15% 26%
Cloud photo storage 17% 11% 17% 15% 40%
Phone passcode 16% 17% 22% 15% 29%
Social media accounts 15% 14% 17% 22% 32%
Email accounts 13% 9% 13% 19% 45%
Banking or financial services 11% 5% 9% 14% 62%
Any kind of digital password 16% 18% 22% 15% 29%

Streaming logins move fastest. A quarter of respondents shared streaming access in the first month of the relationship, and 62% had done so within six months, according to All About Cookies. Banking moves slowest, with 62% waiting more than a year - the same percentage, in the opposite direction. Email comes next, with 45% waiting beyond a year, followed by cloud photo storage at 40%. "It takes an understandably long time to build up enough trust to share something as important as access to financial accounts and information," the survey says.

One row is harder to square with the rest. The line for "any kind of digital password at all" shows 16% sharing something within the first month, fewer than the 25% who shared streaming access alone in the same period. Anyone who shared a streaming login in the first month had, by definition, shared a password of some kind. The bases for each row are not published, so the gap cannot be resolved from the survey itself. The "any password" row is also nearly identical to the phone passcode row, differing only in the one-to-three-month band (18% against 17%). All About Cookies offers no explanation. Several rows total 99% or 101%, which is consistent with rounding.

Transparency, former partners and trust

Should couples share every password? Respondents split three ways. According to All About Cookies, 22% favoured "complete transparency," 25% said "people should have privacy," and 53% chose sharing "for some accounts but not all." Taken together, 75% back sharing at least some passwords.

Shared credentials can outlive the relationship. Among respondents with an ex, 6% said a former partner definitely knows a login or password they still use, and another 12% said it was possible.

On the survey's own measure, trust in a current partner's handling of passwords is high. Among people currently in a relationship, 64% strongly or completely trust their partner with their passwords and 21% somewhat trust them, a combined 85%. Seven percent were neutral, 4% somewhat distrustful and 5% strongly or completely distrustful. Those bars total 101%, which the chart attributes to rounding.

The high trust score and the snooping figures do not necessarily contradict one another. The trust question went only to people in a current relationship, while the 36% covers anyone who has ever been in one. The survey does not cross-tabulate the two, so it cannot show whether the people who snoop are the same people who report trusting their partner.

Who published the survey

All About Cookies describes itself as "an informational website that provides tips, advice, and recommendations" covering online privacy, identity theft prevention, antivirus protection and digital security. The survey carries a disclosure at the top: "We receive compensation from the products and services mentioned in this story, but the opinions are the author's own. Compensation may impact where offers appear."

The survey's closing section turns to product categories. It recommends password managers with shared vaults, changing passwords after a breakup, guidance on detecting phone spying and antispyware software, each linked to All About Cookies' own rankings, and earlier in the text it recommends two-factor authentication. Directly after the methodology sits a promotional panel for Aura Password Manager, labelled "2026 Editors' Choice" and "Best All-In-One Password Manager," with an editorial rating of 4.7 and a promotion headed "Save Up to 63%."

This is a standard affiliate arrangement in consumer technology publishing, where the publisher is paid a commission when a referred reader buys. It does not by itself undermine the findings. It is, however, relevant context for a poll whose conclusions lead towards the categories of product the site reviews and earns from.

Why shared logins matter to advertisers

The survey says nothing about advertising. Its data on streaming and shopping apps nonetheless touches a problem the ad industry has wrestled with for years: a logged-in account is not always one person.

Streaming platforms increasingly sell audiences built on account data. Netflix's ad inventory, with more than 250 million global monthly active users, became available to all buyers in The Trade Desk's Sellers and Publishers 500+ marketplace in July 2026, with no minimum spend. If 84% of people who have been in a relationship have shared a streaming password with a partner, and a quarter did so within a month of getting together, a single account can stand for more than one adult with different viewing habits. The survey does not measure how often a shared login is used by the partner rather than the account holder.

Platforms have begun adjusting reach figures for more than one viewer. Google Ads moved seven campaign-level reach metrics to a "Total Co-view" definition from June 2, 2026, without restating earlier data. Co-viewing, though, covers people watching the same screen. Credentials shared across separate devices are a different issue, one that complicates identity resolution - the work of deciding which devices and identifiers belong to the same person or household.

Some services have moved to police sharing directly. According to Spotify's support page, the company may ask some Premium Family members to prove they live with the plan manager by scanning a rotating QR code on the manager's phone within seven days, and members who miss the window cannot join another Family or Duo plan for 12 months. That enforcement targets sharing between households. The All About Cookies figures describe sharing between partners, who may or may not live together.

The 59% share for food delivery and shopping apps carries a parallel point for commerce media. Purchase histories on a shared account can mix two people's behaviour, and any audience segment or attribution model built on that account inherits the mix. Again, the survey does not quantify it.

Account security on ad platforms

For marketers, credential sharing is also an operational matter inside their own tools. Since July 15, 2026, Google Ads has required a passkey - a pair of cryptographic keys created on a device and tied to a single site or app, in place of a typed secret - for sensitive actions such as account linking updates and user access changes, a requirement Google emailed to advertisers in May. Removing a colleague's access has also become harder: Google Ads now asks for a written justification and a second admin's approval, and the request expires after 20 days if nobody acts.

A year of consumer privacy polling

The survey joins a run of consumer privacy studies published in 2026. Cloaked found in July that 43% of 1,000 US consumers avoid giving their real phone number online, and an earlier Cloaked survey of 1,009 US adults found that only 18% trust AI to keep their personal data secure. Usercentrics' State of Digital Trust 2026, based on 11,000 consumers in seven markets, found that 24% had canceled a subscription or stopped buying from a brand over AI data concerns. Those studies measure how people feel about companies holding their data. The All About Cookies figures concern the person closest to them.

The survey's reference to monitoring tools that a partner or ex might install covertly also connects to earlier platform work on personal surveillance. In May 2024, Apple and Google introduced an industry standard that alerts iOS and Android users when an unknown Bluetooth tracker is moving with them.

Timeline

Summary

Who: All About Cookies, a US website that reviews privacy and security software and earns compensation from products it mentions, surveyed 1,000 US adults who have been in at least one romantic relationship. The research was written by Steph Trejos and edited by Kalleigh Lane.

What: 36% of respondents have used a password they were not supposed to have to secretly check a partner's account or messages, and 36% have found something upsetting through a partner's or ex's login. 84% have shared a streaming password with a partner, against 48% for banking. 62% of those sharing banking access with a current partner waited more than a year. 15% check a partner's accounts weekly, 5% without permission. No margin of error, panel provider or subgroup base sizes are disclosed, and the "any password" timing row does not reconcile with the streaming row.

When: Fieldwork took place in September 2026. The results carry a last-updated date of October 27, 2026.

Where: The United States, with results published on All About Cookies' website.

Why: The data shows how far password sharing and covert account access extend within relationships. For advertisers and publishers, the high rate of shared streaming and shopping logins bears on audience measurement, identity resolution and attribution built on logged-in accounts, at a time when platforms such as Spotify are policing account sharing and Google Ads is tightening account access with passkeys and second-admin approval.